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True wealth comes from helping others

Life has many twists and turns. Mine came in the form of a stroke. It made me feel how precious being alive and having a sense of purpose can be.

I was lucky to have retired from a good company with good benefits and good health care. Of course, this was not handed to us. The men and women before me won those rights in collective bargaining. During those years, we elected the right people in government and were able to win such things as the 40-hour work week, cost-of-living raises, overtime pay, and with the help of government, better safety in the workplace (OSHA). And yes, we got health care for ourselves and our families. However, it pains me that for a long time, unless you belonged to a good union, most people did not get that. The people in the Tea Party and most Republicans feel that health care is a privilege and not a right. When the Lord Jesus gave the blind man sight, did he hand him a bill? Jesus in his time was preaching to care and love your fellow man! The high priest of the temple with all his money felt threatened by such a new way of thinking. Sound familiar?

The wealthy in our country today feel that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits and anything that helps the working class and poor people are handouts. They feel that they don’t have to help anybody. They like to use that evil word “socialism.” Of course, they go to church, too. Do they not remember that in the Bible we are encouraged to help those who cannot help themselves? Ever since the New Deal, it seems to gripe the wealthy in this country that working people even get a piece of the pie! That is why their party (the Republicans), back in the ’80s, passed laws giving corporations tax breaks to ship jobs overseas, sapping income from our workers and drained Medicare and Social Security of much needed revenue by giving the wealthy some of the biggest tax breaks in history.

The exception was the Clinton years. Although the top tax bracket was only 39 percent we had a surplus and money as far as the eye could see! And everybody was making a good living.

Now, after the Bush tax cuts, they have just about broken the whole country. I still remember when the tax rate for the very wealthy was 90 percent in the late ’50s and early ’60s. You would think they would be happy at 39 percent but they want more!

I can only hope and pray that the people of this country make the right decision and do not elect Mitt Romney. He is a man whose only purpose is to give himself and his wealthy friends another huge tax cut and to drain the benefits the working people have worked so hard to give their families! For the wealthy I leave this last word: “It is easier for the camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for the rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!”

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